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Clean Water and Sanitation
Access by Consumers to Essential Services: Energy, Water and Sanitation
The present report aims to provide policy makers with background on the emerging trends and considerations as well as policy options focusing on the key requirements for inclusive and affordable access. Following this introduction chapter two provides an overview of the international policy frameworks namely the Guidelines and the Sustainable Development Goals. Chapter three describes the features of the network services of water and sanitation and energy and places them in the consumer protection framework of inclusivity affordability and rights. Chapter four considers the role to be played by competitive markets and the interplay of competition policy and the regularization of the informal sector. Chapter five contains several policy options in the light of sustainability including demand and supply-side efficiencies and fiscal options for demand reduction. A brief conclusion follows with a summary of policy considerations.
Policy recommendations
In this paper we argued that water security needs more attention from SIDS as a strategic priority in their national development plans (Section 2). To identify how SIDS can align economic plans with water security priorities we drew policy implications from the water footprint of production consumption and trade in SIDS (Section 3) and identified policy gaps in the national development plans themselves (Section 4). In this section we take up the considerations identified in earlier sections and provide actionable policy recommendations for SIDS to better incorporate water security and productivity in their national development plans.
Aligning Economic Development and Water Policies in Small Island Developing States (SIDS)
Small island developing States (SIDS) are among the most water-scarce countries in the world. This strategic risk is exacerbated by their extreme exposure to climate changes such as sea-level rise changing rainfall patterns and more frequent and severe weather events. Water being an element of life its scarcity undermines fundamental priorities such as the human right to clean water and sanitation and the conservation of habitat and biodiversity. By extension water scarcity constrains economic development in SIDS impacting the feasibility of developing water-intensive industries or more productive technologies such as irrigated agriculture. Scarcity also imposes zero-sum compromises in allocating water for the production of on one hand essentials such as food and energy and on the other hand commercial goods and services. Despite the strategic threat posed by mounting scarcity water security is only sporadically treated in SIDS’ economic development plans. By contrast many of their plans are tempered with policies to build resilience and mitigate other strategic risks such as climate change adaptation disaster risk reduction and ensuring food security. In this paper we analyze how SIDS can better align their economic development and water management policies to support the productive transformation their economies in particular by incorporating water security and water productivity as priorities into their economic plans.
Water and economic development
Small island developing states (SIDS) face multiple challenges to their economic development. They typically have small land areas small populations and limited natural resource endowments at their disposal. Their small economies with limited productive capacity are often structured narrowly on fisheries tourism or a few other services. While SIDS depend heavily on trade especially for imports of staples and inputs their geographic isolation and dispersion makes inter-island commerce costly and undermines their export competitiveness.
Water use in productive economic activities in SIDS
Water’s multiple societal values are realised through its uses from conservation to drinking water to productive economic activities. By extension water-secure economic policy should be based on past and present water uses and map the changes to water use necessary to support development objectives. In this section we profile water use in SIDS focussing on its use as an input in productive economic activities: agriculture industry and energy generation.
Policy analysis
In this section we present an evaluation of how well water and economic development policies are aligned in the 38 SIDS in our sample. Our objective was to identify policy gaps for which we recommend remedies in the following section.
Acknowledgements
This paper was prepared by Kris Terauds Economic Affairs Officer and Darell Bloch Intern in UNCTAD’s SIDS and Status Issues Section under the direction of Paul Akiwumi Director of Division on Africa Least Developed Countries and Special Programmes and the supervision of Patrick Osakwe Chief Trade and Poverty Branch.
Introduction
Small island developing States (SIDS) are among the most water-scarce countries in the world with seven in ten SIDS facing risks of water shortage including nine in ten low-lying SIDS (UNESCO UNEP 2016). Water being an element of life its scarcity undermines fundamental priorities such as the human right to clean water and sanitation and the conservation of habitat and biodiversity.